


lay my sword down

by moth_writes



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mostly Canon Compliant, Non-Linear Narrative, Pre-Canon, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-27
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-14 13:47:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28671744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moth_writes/pseuds/moth_writes
Summary: Based on Eight by Sleeping at Last.AFTG Mixtape Exchange for tansie!
Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 3
Kudos: 8
Collections: AFTG Mixtape Exchange 2021





	lay my sword down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tansie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tansie/gifts).



> Here you go! I didn't use all of the lines in the song, but I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> Fair warning, it does jump back and forth between past and present quite a bit.

_NEIL_

_I remember the minute_

Nathaniel wakes to a dark room and cold hands.

His mother, standing above him, is wreathed in shadow and backlit by the red of his nightlight. She’s dressed in black, with a gun strapped to her hip and a bag over her shoulder.

“Up,” she hisses, and Nathaniel sits in his bed, watching her. “We’re going.”

Nathaniel doesn’t ask where. He doesn’t ask what time it is.

He knows better than to expect answers.

So he slips out of bed, smoothing the blankets behind him, and dresses quickly in the clothes his mother gives him.

They leave, and Nathaniel never looks back. 

Tries not to, anyway.

_It was like a switch was flipped_

Neil watches the door open and thinks, I missed you.

He has no reason to. Andrew is a deal, is protection in sharp grins and sharper knives. 

But.

Andrew’s knives don’t scare him, Neil thinks. On Andrew knives are something safe, a threat and a promise. Of security, of the fleeting joy that comes with knowing there is someone there for you. Someone to pick up your pieces.

Neil thinks Andrew would. Pick up his pieces, stitch them back together with bloody metal and hard words.

Like a switch flipped, a tap opened, Neil feels the certainty of it filling his bones, his lungs, holding the knowledge of it in his chest like warmth and security and a comfort blanket stitched with razor blades.

Neil watches Andrew walk through a door with a blank face and no drugs and thinks, there you are.

_I was just a kid who grew up strong enough_

Chris wraps the bandage tightly around his mother’s arm a final time, securing it with medical tape and cutting off the extra. They sit in silence, waiting for any bit of red to seep through the layers.

But none does, and Chris’s mother finally lets him go. Not far, only to the bathroom, but further than she’s let him out of arm’s reach in days.

Chris leans back against the bathroom door with the lights off and his eyes closed. He presses his shaking hand over his mouth, wills away the tears building and burning. 

He allows himself a moment, a second, of the barest comfort-the only kind he can afford, aside from his mother’s cold arms holding tight-before he lets out a breath and stands straight. He does what he has to, securing his own freshly applied bandages and stepping into motel-hot water with the lights still off.

He has to be strong, he reminds himself, has to learn to pull himself together. Chris thinks of his mother’s harsh words and soft voice and whispers into silence. He ignores the sting of water against his scraped-up chest and repeats that, over and over, again and again until he’s almost sure it’s true. 

He can be strong enough, because he has to be. He can be strong enough, because he is learning how.

_To pick this armor up_

Alex pulls the bulletproof vest on over a worn out t-shirt. His mother, standing behind him, tugs at the fabric underneath until the vest is laying flat against him.

Good, she says. Keep this on. Alex nods. The place where the bullet had gone through his shoulder throbs briefly, as though reminding him of its existence.

He doesn’t need it. He’s aware of it, completely, always. The throb of blood pulsing through his arm, under and around the torn skin is what he wakes up to, goes through his day with, what lulls him to sleep at night.

The bandages over it rustle and Alex carefully puts on his jacket and zips it all the way up. He hopes he isn’t bleeding again.

I’ll never take this vest off again, he swears, and the fervent beat of his heart rings with his promise.

_And suddenly it fit_

Stefan clicks the safety off the gun and aims, lining up the shot carefully but quickly. He’s too close and he knows it, but he doesn’t have any other options right now. 

He fires, and it hits his target, through the man’s shoulder and further, bullet burying itself in the wall behind them. Shards of it rain down on them like rain turned sharp. Stefan curses and stumbles with the force of the backlash.

The man collapses in a spray of blood and brick screaming, and Stefan dives forward to help his mother up. She holds his arms, short nails digging in and gripping tight. She’s bleeding from a scrape on her side, but it’s not deep and they need to move.

They go, running and running and leaving the man to die a slow death in a dark alley. Their apartment, always temporary, is ransacked quickly. They have bags for this, always prepared and waiting in the closet by the door. Too much to carry, too vital to leave.

They get out of the apartment and leave the city with the sound of ringing sirens in their ears.

The next day Stefan doesn’t exist, and he is only another nameless boy in the sea of another country.

_God, that was so long ago, long ago, long ago_

Neil sits at his desk and watches Andrew smoke out of an open window on the other side of the room.

It’s Andrew’s last year. Last week. The heat of a southern summer crowds thickly into the room, and Neil feels it settle in his lungs and heart and bones when he breathes it in.

Neil is-legally-twenty-two now. _Eleven years_ , he thinks, it’s a weight and wings, like freedom and falling. It’s been eleven years since he ran, since his mother swept him away. Neil’s been out of his father’s home, care, for longer than he ever was in it.

It’s a realization that dawns with slow joy and anxious wonder. He tells Andrew, tells him he’s made it, he’s free, and Andrew’s sure steps across the room make the fear go quiet.

Something bright and familiar burns in place of it when Andrew’s low voice asks a phrase Neil knows better than breathing, better than running, better than anything.

Neil is alive, and his father isn’t, and his years of suffering are so, so long behind him now.

He’s twenty-two and free and it’s so much better than he ever thought. 

ANDREW

_I was little, I was weak and perfectly naive_

Andrew draws the blade across his skin slowly and savours the sting of air through shallow cuts and the feeling of flesh parting under his fingers.

He watches blood drip red and glinting onto the old shirt across his lap. It soaks in quickly, and Andrew taps at the dark spots left behind. 

His finger comes away stained red. Andrew condsiders it, dismisses it.

It’s not interesting enough, he decides. He goes back to watching the thin, neat cuts on his arm. The bleeding’s almost stopped now, though. Andrew presses his thumb to one of the lines and hisses at the sting.

He laughs bitterly. He won’t be stupid enough to make that mistake again.

_Now you won't see all that I have to lose_

Andrew watches his blank face mirrored in his brother. 

Copycat, he sing-songs internally. Copycat cat copycat copycat cat copycatcopycatcopy.

He glances at the clock and thinks, four hours. Four hours until this round of happy pills wears off and he’s free. 

Andrew runs his fingers over the torn skin of his knuckles and thinks of the way the men’s flesh gave way under them, how it felt to smash into teeth and bone. He ignores the sting.

If there’s one thing Andre is good at, it’s ignoring pain.

And smashing faces.

But, he thinks, only because. They touched what is mine, and I keep my promises.

Andrew makes sure his face is apathetic as he watches what’s his.

He’s let too much slip to go lax now. He won’t let anyone touch any of his again, and he won’t let anyone take from him.

 _Don’t know if they can’t see._ Andrew tips his head back and laughs.

_And all I've lost in the fight to protect it_

Andrew runs his fingers over the edges of the paper idly. His therapist-lucky number nine-stares with an almost invisible eyebrow raised.

If she was going to dye her hair dark, she should’ve gone for the brows too, Andrew thinks. It makes him laugh, so he tells her and watches the eyebrow raise higher before she reaches up and covers them with one hand. It makes Andrew, drug-hazy as he is, laugh himself near breathless.

He stops when she speaks, and focuses on ignoring her scolding. 

Andrew rips the almost-blank paper in half, then half again. The shrink yelps and starts talking furiously, but Andrew rips the paper again and again until it’s little shreds on the floor around him.

He drives home in stony almost-silence, with Nicky’s desperate chatter and Aaron’s single-word answers in the backseat. 

Andrew thinks, _what have I lost?_ The shrink wanted to know.

He won’t tell her. He keeps the answer, the single word, tucked away in the empty darkness where his heart used to be and thinks of how the paper felt tearing between his fingers.

 _Everything_.

_I want to break them right and feel alive_

Kevin picks himself up off the court floor. He’d tripped over one of the many balls Andrew had sent at him, gone down sprawling and cursing.

“Enough,” Andrew says and his voice is raspy with disuse. Kevin looks at him, rubbing his wrist and pouting just slightly.

“Ple-” he starts, and Andrew slams the end of his racquet against the floor hard. It rings though the empty dark and Andrew thinks, you have to listen. You have to know.

“Do not use that word,” he says. It’s as flat and dull as he is, and Kevin flinches. Nods. Pulls himself together with a breath and begins gathering balls and cones.

Andrew watches from his place in the goal and thinks nothing at all.

_I can't let you in, I swore never again_

Andrew twirls the lit cigarette between his fingers and ignores the ash that flutters down. He isn’t supposed to smoke in here, but Coach never comes this far up and even if he did-well. Andrew doesn’t care much about anything, and Coach’s pretend-anger is a far too familiar thing to rile him.

Down on the court floor Neil and Kevin are arguing again, gesturing with racquets and voices shouting, ringing through the stadium.

Andrew lets it play out. They need to learn to get along, and he doesn’t really want to move right now.

He takes a long drag of his cigarette while he watches. Neil. He doesn’t need to watch Kevin, not here.

Kevin turns away, stomping off towards the knocked over cones. Neil turns, looks upupup at where Andrew is lounging.

Even from here Andrew can see the gesture he makes, a little wave and a salute layered thick with sarcasm. Andrew thinks of the true color of his eyes, the blue blue blue of them, and tastes bitter interest like blood and smoke at the back of his mouth.

Andrew thinks, no. Not like this. I said no more.

But it was not a promise, and he has a habit of collecting broken boys.

NEIL

_I can't afford to let myself be blindsided_

Neil sits on a cold bench in an empty locker room and thinks, _oh_.

He presses the plastic of the phone-his phone-harder against his ear and listens to Andrew’s words. They ring, sharp and loud and clear as gunshots through Neil’s startled mind.

He couldn’t. He shouldn’t.

He did.

Neil had thought he couldn’t afford to let himself be caught off guard, be surprised, be blindsided.

And he still can’t.

But this isn’t that. The sharp, glinting edge is still here, but Neil thinks maybe, maybe.

Knives are only weapons in certain hands, and Neil doesn’t think Andrew’s will be used against him.

_I'm standing guard, I'm falling apart_

Neil is torn and bruised and newly-real.

He feels it, the realness, in every burning cut and every peeling scab. His father is dead and Neil is not. Neil is here, and Nathaniel lies buried in a basement in the heart of Baltimore.

It’s more than he ever let himself dream off, and it’s shaking his seams apart. The stitches holding all that he is are frayed and pulled taught, and yet.

And yet.

Neil feels almost safe. He’s here in his dorm room with Andrew sitting at the end of his bed like a wall made of iron and trust, and Neil thinks maybe, _maybe_. 

If he fell apart now, Andrew would hold together his ragged edges and let him sew himself back together.

It’s a terrifying, exhilarating thought, and Neil’s hands shake with it.

“Andrew,” he whispers. Andrew turns, more fluidly than his solid posture should allow, and Neil reaches out slowly.

Andrew eyes his hand for a fraught moment before he takes it and weaves their fingers together loosely. Neil sways, and Andrew leans, and three little words whisper through the air between them. 

_What do you want to know?_

“Truth for a truth,” Neil says and it tastes like ash and light. It’s handing over a piece of himself, flaying his chest open and laying bare all of the secrets that nest in his ribcage and hide in his heart.

Andrew levels him with a steady gaze and Neil thinks _gold_. Gold like keys and gold like chains. Gold like a life he wants and wants and wants and maybe can have.

Neil tells secrets, tells truths and lets the heat of it tear through him. He watches Andrew as he turns out every corner of his being, every bit he is set neatly, jaggedly, brokenly in front of him. 

He watches Andrew take them, pick them up and set them away carefully. Neil thinks _safe_. Safe like keys and safe like chains binding almost never are.

And.

And then Andrew does the same, shows Neil the cuts along his arms and all of the secrets that go along with them. He rips old bandages off, lets the old, calloused layers of hurt and distrust burn away with the rush of his words and the liquid metal of his eyes.

What do you want to know?

 _Everything_.

_I'm just a kid who grew up scared enough_

Nathaniel waits in the dark for his mother to return.

It’s dark here, and cramped. He hadn’t wanted to be here, but his mother had told him to sit stay _quiet_. And so Nathaniel is, sitting silent in his terror and with dry eyes burning.

There’s a scratching and scrabbling from in front of him, and Nathaniel shrinks back. He presses himself against the rough carpet, holds his breath and waits for light to flood back in.

The latch clicks and his mother lifts the lid of their rental car’s trunk. She’s holding a heavy looking bag under one arm and has another slung over her shoulder, and Nathaniel hopes briefly she’s brought snacks. He hasn’t ate since dinner last night, and the fear and excitement of their escape had dulled his hunger until now.

He dismisses it. It’s a stupid, irrevelent thought and he has other things to concentrate on now.

His mother’s short nails dig into his arm when she helpstugspulls Nathaniel out of the trunk. He stands on unsteady legs, gripping her wrist as tightly as he dares and blinking through the spots the fluorescent lights above bring.

He looks. He doesn’t know where they are, somewhere with large, unfamiliar machines pushed against walls and another car half taken apart next to them.

He doesn’t ask. Mary is looking at a door on the far wall, and she doesn’t break her unblinking gaze when she pushes the bag that had been around her shoulder at Nathaniel.

“Eat something,” she says. “Quickly. Don’t make a mess.”

Nathaniel nods as he takes the bag and holds it to his chest. He digs out a granola bar and sets the bag at his feet. 

He pauses before he rips open the wrapper and turns to his mother. She still isn’t looking at him, but he doesn’t care. 

Nathaniel leans into his mother’s side and her hand runs through his hair. He closes his eyes. “Mom?”

“What.” It’s not a question. It’s the absent acknowledgement of a busy parent, and it’s a tone Nathaniel is well acquainted with.

Nathaniel turns his face into his mother’s coat and says, “I’m scared.” It’s the reluctant admission of a child brought up to show no weakness, a desperate attempt to portray what his limited vocabulary cannot.

“I know. Get used to it, Nathaniel-scared or dead, I’ll let you choose.”

He doesn’t answer. She doesn’t press. 

Nathaniel thinks, this is it. My life will never be the same.

He can’t help the relief that floods him at that, nearly enough to rival the terror sunk deep in his bones.

He’ll be scared, terrified to the very edges of his mind, but he won’t have his father’s looming presence forever over him.

It’s an almost equal trade off, he thinks. Maybe.

_And bury my innocence_

Abram lets tears freeze on his face as he digs and digs and digs.

The sand is cold and grainy between his fingers, and he can’t feel his feet. Abram doesn’t care.

He stops, leans back on his heels and rests his hands on filthy, torn jeans. The bag, _his_ bag, lies next to him zipped up tightly.

Abram thinks, she’s in there. All that remains of his mother, of the woman who was once Mary Hatford, is in that bag. 

He doesn’t count the flesh melted into the burned shell of their last car. The rip of it, the sound of separating bone from distorted skin still rings in his ears. The hollow impact of metal pipe against a body haunts his heartbeats, and Abram is near breathless with it.

He goes back to digging. It’s a long time before the hole is deep enough to lay the bag in, and Abram’s fingers are numb and scraped raw from it.

He fills the sand in, packing it down and hoping beyond hope no one will find it. His mother-because she hadn’t been Mary then, hadn’t been Mary since they left-had burned sections of his fingerprints off methodically, and he’s almost certain that even if any partial imprint survives it can’t be traced back to him.

Abram pats the last of the cold grit into place and leans back. He looks up, up and up and up at the grey sky of a North California almost-storm.

Abram has to leave. He has to go, get as far away as he can as fast as possible. He stands, and when he leaves behind a buried bag of bones and the burned husk of a car it feels like a part of himself stays.

He tells himself he doesn’t need it. 

He’s not sure that’s true.

_But here's a map, here's a shovel_

Neil spills everything out in a rush of words and watches Andrew’s face flicker with the briefest, barest hints of emotion.

“She’s in California,” Neil says and it burns his tongue raw. “Buried in the sand in an old backpack.”

Andrew reaches and Neil grasps and it’s like a piece of himself he didn’t know wasn’t set in right settles into place. It’s like ice on a bruise and air when you’re drowning.

It’s a line Neil takes and uses to pull himself up, to tie his slipping pieces back into place.

It’s the second time they’ve done this. Second time they’ve spilled truth like blood and tears between them, and Neil thinks he’ll never get used to the way it feels. Like peeling his skin away and exposing his scarred insides, like running through sun, like a racquet weighing heavy in his hand.

He’s never told anyone where his mother is. Stuart didn’t ask-the wound of it is still fresh, Neil thinks. Mary hadn’t been Mary, hadn’t been anyone but her ever-changing facade since Neil was ten, but she’d always been Stuart’s little sister.

Neil is grateful he doesn’t have any siblings. 

He puts his uncle’s grief out of his mind and focuses on Andrew’s sharp gaze and Andrew’s warm hands.

He continues, lets words pour as he details his life on the run. He draws Andrew a map in fear and blood, in fight and loss, and it’s like the weight on his shoulders shifts. Like Andrew takes some of it, holds him up and grounds him.

And then Neil listens, listens and listens and listens as Andrew tells him about the homes. His heart sings with fury and protectiveness, and Neil considers calling in a few favors and ridding the world of a few more.

Here's my Achilles' heel

_I'm all in, palms out_

Neil holds his hand in front of him, open and ready and almost pleading. Andrew takes them, as Neil knewthoughthoped he would, and they turn and go.

Through the door, through the curtain of deals struck. They shrug off the heavy, burning weight of the FBI agents’ stares and leave skinned and new.

Neil thinks, now. I’m real, now. Neil Josten is a person, fully and legally, and that is who he will be for the rest of his life. 

It feels like a cage closing in. It feels like flying over open sea.

All in, now. He can’t back out.

Neil chokes back a near-delirious laugh and squeezes Andrew’s hand tight. 

All in.

ANDREW

_I am strong, I am strong, I am strong enough to let you in_

Andrew leans against the window and watches Neil cross the parking lot below him, with auburn hair catching in the sun and a bag slung over his shoulder.

He thinks, yes. He’s strong enough to let Neil in, to trust him. 

And he thinks Neil won’t let him down. Neil will stay, because they are each other’s home.

Andrew feels the phantom press of a key hot against his palm. 

He thinks _yes_.

_For the innocent, for the vulnerable_

Aaron watches him with wide eyes and a bloody face and Andrew is laughing, laughing, laughing.

He can’t stop, and the blood splattered warm across his face feels like the tears he can’t spill.

He lays back, closes his eyes, ignores Drake’s caved-in corpse on the floor. His brother is unhurt, and Drake is dead, and the pills tug all of the fear and desperate hate in him up through his chest and out in bursts of breathless giggles.

Andrew hates it, hates all of it with more emotion than he should feel.

But Aaron is okay, and Nicky is standing stunned in the doorway, and he can’t let them be hurt. They’re his, and he won’t let anyone lay a hand on them. Not Aaron or Nicky or Kevin, not even Neil.

He isn’t innocent or vulnerable. He doesn’t have any choice, any chance to be. Andrew thinks he never has, not since Tilda looked at them and decided she didn’t want Andrew.

He doesn’t care. What’s past is past, and there’s no sense in wishing. So Andrew, body wracked with pain and hoarse laughter, makes sure what is his is still okay, still as innocent as they can be.

NEIL

_And I'll give all I have, I'll give my blood, give my sweat_

Neil runs and runs and plays like he never has before, pouring his heart and soul and all the suffering he’s had to endure into the game.

He gave up everything for this. He would again.

_An ocean of tears will spill for what is broken_

Neil and Andrew stand side by side as they watch the news run Riko’s death and the Butcher of Baltimore’s end. Neil, in quiet, fervent words, recounts the sight of the bullet embedding and the blood splattering.

Andrew doesn’t smile, but the air of satisfaction around him is undeniable. Neil feels it too, like a cloud around him. Like armor drawn tight, irony and sick pleasure wrapped up with a bow.

Others will cry, he knows. Riko will be mourned.

But not by them.

Tonight, they celebrate. They have all the time in the world, now.

_I'm shattered porcelain, glued back together again_

Andrew traces the scars across Neil’s chest and tells him about kintsugi. Broken pottery mended with gold, something old and useless renewed and given new life.

Neil thinks, gold.

Yes. He is broken porcelain mended, held together with hope and love. He’s put back together with his Foxes’ help, and he’s not alone anymore.

_Invincible like I've never been._

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
